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Jewel Cave Wild Cave Tour: A First-Hand Guide to the Hardest of the Big Four
- May 19
- 5 min read
Crawling through the Wild Cave Tour at Jewel Cave National Park
Why This Trip
On a mission to do all of the Big Four Wild Cave Tours (Mammoth Cave, Wind Cave, Jewel Cave, and Carlsbad Caverns), this Wild Cave Tour fit perfectly into a larger South Dakota road trip where I also visited the Badlands National Park, Mount Rushmore, Custer, and both Wind and Jewel Caves as well as Agate Fossil National Monument. You can read about my trip and get a free itinerary here.
Reservations:
Due to this tour being so strenuous, NPS requires you to fill out a reservation request form to be added to a waitlist for wild cave tours. Then, at the beginning of the month, they call everyone in the order they signed up. Once they call you, they read you a long detailed information paragraph about how hard and difficult the tour is. They also go over clothing and footwear requirements. After they have you verbally agree, they offer you what dates are available to choose from depending on your group size.
They were very flexible with dates for me, so I chose a Friday as to try to have a smaller group. I ended up in a group of 4 out of 5 maximum. The availability of dates and days is entirely dependent on how many rangers trained to do the Wild Cave Tour they have staffed. Due to NPS cuts, expect availability to be extremely limited. Our guide was the supervising ranger of the tours, Britney Lemus. She was amazing.
Cost
The fee for the tour is $45.
Check-In, Clothing Checks, & The Squeeze Box
On the day of the tour, I checked into the Visitor's Center and had my shoes checked. I made sure to be wearing over the ankle hiking boots with good tread and also chose a plain white tshirt. Why? Because it would get direty and stained from all the crawling and manganese, making for a cool souvenior. Also, then I don't ruin a tshirt I actually like.
Pro Tip: The surrounding laundromats will not let you wash your clothing after cave tours in their washing machines because this manganese ruins the washing machines.
Once all together, the ranger makes you crawl through the tight squeeze outside the visitor center. It's a small concrete box that you must prove you fit through by fitting through it. This way you know you can get through the tightest squeeze in the cave.
After everyone is approved, they escort you to a changing area where my necklace my mom got me will forever rest between the wooden bench and the wall. They provide you a helmet, headlamp, and kneepads. They do not provide you overalls like they did at Mammoth or a personal satchel. You aren't allowed to wear any jewerly, bring a phone, any food, or personal items including water.
Phones and Water
The ranger will bring some water for the group to share if you'd like (I did not, I'll pass on starnger cooties) and their own phone. Our ranger made sure to take 2 candid photos of us so we had a memory and email them to us complete with some other cool photos of the cave and the route. This was different from both Mammoth Cave and Wind. Mammoth, we could bring our own phones or gopros and take any photos we wanted as long as we kept up. At Wind Cave, they not only don't let you bring a phone, they also don't take any photos of you.
The Wild Cave Tour
Duration of the Wild Cave Tour
This tour lasted us about 5 hours with 4 people.
Jewel Cave Wild Cave Tour Route
Once geared up, you're taken to the enterance of the cave. The group navigates through the various caverns of the cave right away. First, you head to the Traffic Counter to explore. You then backtrack towards the enterence and head to do a loop.
Once you start the loop you get to witness come cave pearls and then head straight to the Brain Drain. This is the tight squeeze they prepare you for at the visitor's center. These cave pearls are composed of calcium salts. After this, you belly crawl up and down through the Roller Coaster Room which ends with Martha's Kettle. You get to see gypsum needles on your way from Martha's Kettle to the Otter Slide. Yes, you slide on your belly. You could go on your back but trust me, stomach is better.
Now onto some upper body strength, the Rope Assist. We actually passed the rope assist the first time and headed towards the back of the cave to the Teleportation Machine. They asked us to move quickly on the way between the rope assist and the Teleportation Machine and we weren't quite sure why until on the way back.
Now you're halfway through the tour, probably a little tired, and have to hoist yourself up on The Stirrup. The ranger helps you, but you still have to get up there, and then stem between the rocks to shimmy to the end. Again, this is the hardest and most strenuous Wild Cave Tour out of all of Big Four.
Finally, the back of the cave, Hurricane Corner. It gets it's name because you crawl through a small opening and into a tiny chamber, one at a time, and experience winds over 35+ mph it feels like a hurricane. This is because Jewel Cave is a barometric cave and this passage acts as a constricted breathing point, where underground air pressure equalizes with surface weather causing it to be very windy.
On the way back after Hurricane Corner, we finally found out what teh rush was about. The Hydromagnesite Balloons. Famously, The Earring. These are so delicate even your breath could knock them down. These are some of the rarest speleothems to ever exist. You can read more about there on the National Speleological Society's website.
After this it's pretty straight forward walking past boxwork and The Diving Board and back to the elevators.
Final Thought
This tour is not for the weak or faint of heart. It's the hardest tour I did out of Mammoth, Wind and Jewel. It was so tiring that I found a campground with a pool to relax and take a shower after, and then canceled my Wind Cave Tour the next day because of fatigue. After I went back to Wind Cave to complete it though, it was so easy I could've definitely done Wind Cave after this one or before, but not knowing how hard Wind was, I veered on the safe side.
It's also the longest and most interesting as far as physical caving goes, but Mammoth and Wind cave better more interesting history. For an overview of the History of Wind Cave read my write up here. There's good drama!
📍 For a free itinerary builder and trip tracker to help you plan this trip, check out the Granola Girl Web App! There's also a pre-made Black Hills Itinerary for you to check out too!
Gear I Used:
Merrell Hiking Boots
REI Hiking Pants
Plain White T-Shirt
Related Posts
Wind Cave Wild Cave Tour
Mammoth Cave Wild Cave Tour Experience
South Dakota Road Trip Itinerary
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